The Two Main Goals of a Facelift

The eternal facelift conundrum for almost everyone goes somewhat like this:

“I want to look better, even way better. I want to look in the mirror and see that I look awake and happy instead of tired and sad. I really want that change to happen, but I don’t want people to notice that I’ve had a facelift.”

If this is what you’ve thought, you have a lot of company. If you feel a little embarrassed about saying that, you have a lot of company. The good news is that you can have it both ways – and the reasons are twofold.

First, and most importantly, the facelift must look natural, but the road to natural has to be through the vision and skill of your surgeon, not just doing less. We could do nothing and get natural, but that’s not what you’re signing up for. You’re signing up for skilled surgery, artistic vision and the ethics of someone who will treat your face as if it were their own. Let’s say you’ve found that with your doctor and you get a result that makes you look more as you did in your youth. The vitality, radiance, lift and definition of your face are back, but what will people think????

Here’s the reality. Just to bring it into perspective, let’s look at a situation most of us have experienced. You go to a gathering. You wear a lovely outfit. A couple months later, a similar event is to take place with some of the same people. You agonize because while the outfit you wore to the first event is perfect and you feel fabulous in it, you’re a little embarrassed to wear the same thing again. But think of the people who were at that event. Can you remember what they wore? Chances are that unless something particularly stood out, you can’t.

For better or worse, human nature is engineered to make us a bit more self-absorbed than we’d like to admit.

Now back to the facelift. If it looks natural, most people will just subconsciously register that you look great, or they will consciously register that you look great and will ascribe it to just about anything but surgery on your face. They will think you changed your hair. (If you actually changed your hair around the time of the surgery, all the better.) They will think you lost weight, fell in love, went on a long vacation, retired, began working out, whatever. Of course there are exceptions to this, but mostly these will be people who either have had facial work done themselves and are now primed to notice these things or people who have been thinking about it and want to have some of what you got. And in the latter case they may pull you aside and ask where you had it done. In any event, the bottom line is that if it looks good, if it looks natural and if it looks like the best version of you, your face will cause endorphins to be released in those that look at you – and that’s all good.